Farm and Rural Building Conversions E-Book

Carole Ryan

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 580

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Provides a detailed record of types of rural building and offers advice for conversion, including retention of period features where appropriate. Sympathetic conversion ensures that the record of rural life is not lost. Contents include; history and development of all types of farm and related buildings; conservation and planning issues; Local Authority guidelines; conservation professionals and ethics; the design process; budgeting; working within a rural context and landscape; and case studies. Farm and Rural Buildings offers a vital resource for owners and conservation and building professionals.

Leseprobe

FARM AND RURALBUILDING CONVERSIONS

A Guide to Conservation,Sustainability and Economy

CAROLE RYAN

First published in 2013 by The Crowood Press Ltd, Ramsbury, Marlborough, Wiltshire, SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book edition first published in 2013

© Carole Ryan 2013

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

ISBN 978 1 84797 519 5

DedicationTo the memory of Clifford William Rose Ridout, late of Stalbridge and Okeford Fitzpaine, Dorset, a loving partner and best friend.

AcknowledgementsMuch of this book would not have been possible without the help and support of Tim Reeve of TFH Reeve Architectural Consultancy, Donhead Mill, Scotts Hill, Shaftesbury, Dorset SP7 9EP. This extended to access to recent conversion sites and relevant material, including the plans and details of conversion. He has given freely of his time in his unfailingly cheerful and helpful way, and provided access to considerable data from his practice, which specializes in the field of conversion and conservation. Grateful thanks also go to Dave Ward, owner of the conversion of the barrel-vaulted barn, and to the many other owners and occupiers who have over a period of many years allowed access to their buildings.

Contents

1  The Origin and Development of Rural Buildings

2  Rural Building Types and Their Groupings

3  Conservation and Planning Issues

4  Professional Input, Budgeting and the Ethics of Conservation

5  Building Regulations and Energy Eff ciency Issues

6  Best Practice and Design

7  The Design Process, Contracts and Project Management

Bibliography

Index

THE PLANNING SCENARIO

During the course of writing this book and particularly in its final stages the planning situation in England has changed dramatically to the point where it has become impossible to present a cogent final picture. Instead planning is in what can only be described as a roller coaster situation. The Policy Planning Statements (PPS) which replaced Policy Planning Guidance (PPG) have been condensed into fifty pages of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF); however, a knowledge of their original content is still useful.

Whilst the aims of the NPPF are laudable there are always going to be loopholes, which the PPS documents were designed to stem. Some might say that this can only be beneficial, especially for the conversion of redundant rural buildings, but only time will tell and the downside of not having any one situation made explicit can only be a lawyer’s paradise.

THE VAT SCENARIO

The VAT situation has also radically altered during the writing of this book.

Listed Buildings have for many years enjoyed exception from paying VAT on new work. Whilst this was seen by many as encouraging the alteration of listed buildings it also enabled much-needed refurbishment of buildings that were gaining a new use. Included in this are farm and rural buildings where the new use is undoubtedly going to generate some form of new work, especially those related to green technology. In a budget early in 2012 all VAT exception was removed. Whilst funds for listed places of worship have been compensated by offering an increase, rural buildings are firmly out in the cold until such time as a Government sees the logic of having a more equitable system of perhaps a standard rate of 5 per cent for all repairs and alterations to listed buildings – a measure favoured by some professional Institutes.

CHAPTER 1

The Origin and Development of Rural Buildings

INTRODUCTION

The majority of rural buildings are tied in some way to the history of farming, be they those of the humble peasant, or those of the great landowning estates. Farming was the backbone of rural Britain, even in later periods when the Industrial Revolution appeared to hold sway over pockets of the countryside such as the Ironbridge Gorge, Shropshire. Even here farming was still practised as a by-trade to industrial activity.

The majority of historic farmsteads encompass the whole history of England in their siting, beneath their surface and encapsulated within their rural buildings. While it would be unusual for present sites to reflect the first settlers, reputed to be Neolithic, it is less uncommon for present-day farms to be in the vicinity of Iron Age enclosures, while some are set within the large enclosure of a small Saxon farming estate.

The most significant farm enclosure that may still reflect its original site is that of the manor house, which also operated as the demesne farm and was heavily defended. On the Welsh border, where invasion often met firm resistance, such defence took the form of a motte and bailey castle, the motte being surmounted with a timber keep, and the bailey the defended farmstead. Manorial enclosures around the demesne farms were often shared with the church, on a two-thirds/one-third basis. Such enclosures can be easily read from early estate maps, enclosure maps or tithe maps, and in many cases are still visible today.

The yeoman farms that replaced the manorial regime after the Black Death in some instances still survive today, their sturdy farmhouses, some still within moated sites (an early status symbol) having witnessed events such as the Civil War. They are still the heart of the working farm. Some may have been rebuilt in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and have lived through tumultuous events such as the Napoleonic wars, which in turn stimulated food production, and the enclosure of waste and common. This had major effect on the lives of the poor, who relied upon access to this facility for sustenance. The story continues with the tragic events of the two World Wars, the earlier being the most devastating, with the loss of thousands of farm workers who knew the land intimately but would never return to pass on their skills.

Saxon enclosure and Norman motte and bailey castle. The ridge and furrow field system is arguably the same date as the Saxon enclosure.

Mottes started life as conical, flat-topped mounds but time has eroded this example.

Farmsteads reflect a palimpsest of the history of England, not just great events but the people who lived through them, and whose farming lives, shaped accordingly, can be read through the buildings and the land.

PREHISTORIC TO MEDIEVAL TIMES

The true origin of the actual form of farm buildings will forever be lost to us. The first farmers are reputed to be Neolithic man because finds indicate that they started to settle in one place for longer periods than their nomadic prehistoric ancestors. They exhausted their immediate environment of food sources before moving further afield, though there is currently some dispute about this. Farm buildings may have consisted of simple enclosures of wattle with straw roofs. Iron Age round houses possibly show some affinity with these structures, and as weaving sheds and sunken food pits certainly existed, simple roofed enclosures for stock seem perfectly feasible. So-called Celtic fields echo the distribution of these dispersed settlements, as do the beehive huts to be found in the Celtic zones of Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The Romans would have had revolutionary farm buildings, if indeed they engaged in farming rather than marshalling the indigenous population to supply them with food, but apart from the villa itself, little evidence survives.

Corbelled fifth-century huts on one of the Skellig Islands off the coast of Ireland.

It is clear from archaeological finds that early Saxon farmers, themselves mercenaries brought in to try and fill the military gap left by Romans, were settling in fertile valleys such as those found in Dorset around the banks of the River Stour. The evidence from field names indicates a slow permeation into the heart of the countryside. Their successors, the mid- to late Saxons, left rather more tangible archaeological evidence (below ground) in the shape of their great feasting halls, surrounded by clusters of lesser rectangular buildings. These are the first tangible dispersed farming settlements, although many animals must have remained corralled but unsheltered.

It is in this late Saxon period that the open ridge and furrow field systems – attributed to medieval man – start to manifest. The basis of this was the feudal system of community-owned, oxen-driven plough teams, with military service owed to the Saxon theagn in return for strips in the open fields. Also known to have existed is the three-field rotation with winter corn (wheat, barley, oat and rye), spring corn or peas and beans, and a fallow field. Livestock consisted of horned cattle, which not only supplied meat but also leather and power as well as the all-important manure, implying that the farming cycle of ‘cattle who make the manure, which grows the crops, which feed the cattle (and humans)’ was well understood.

Such beasts would have required some shelter, and many linear village streets appear to have acted as over-wintering pounds, not just for cattle but sheep also, especially at lambing time, when protection was needed against wolves. The Welsh hafod, the farm associated with summer pastures but abandoned in winter extremes, indicates the importance of shelter for animals in winter. The earliest surviving aisled halls also indicate that cattle spent a goodly part of the winter indoors, at one end of living quarters for the upper echelons of society. Lowly farmers possibly had a lean-to roofed shelter at the end of their humble one-room dwelling, and these could be the precursors of a surviving Dorset feature that continues the end hip over a building whose usage may be for cattle housing or workshop; indeed, this was an arrangement that continued into the early twentieth century on the Welsh border. Cattle were also slaughtered and salted as their survival was dependent upon hay, which in a very wet or dry spring would have been in short supply.

Dorset gabled and timber clad outshot, once ubiquitous and now dwindling due to pressures for extensions. The use may have been agricultural or workshop.

Pigs were free spirits, occupying the woods, and living off beech mast (nuts of the beech tree), acorns and grubs. Like wild boar, they were not in need of shelter. It was only as the amount of woodland decreased, due to a slash and burn policy to retrieve agricultural land, that pigs eventually came into the farmyard.

Generally, in the late Saxon/early medieval period the need for farm buildings was limited, which raises the question of where corn was stored and threshed (beaten to remove the ear of corn from the husk). Threshing may have taken place in the cross passage of long houses (dwelling one side of the passage, animals the other) in the earliest open medieval halls, the precursor of the country estates that were to generate their own brand of outbuilding in later centuries. The opposing doors would have enabled the husks (chaff) to be blown away after being thrown into the air in the winnowing basket (though doubtless much remained). Cross passages later assumed a symbolic significance, especially in southwestern England, where they are retained well into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, long after their importance for processing grain or indeed even for controlling the draught for the fire, had ceased to have meaning.

The remaining conundrum is where the un-threshed corn was stored. Thatched ricks were certainly the norm in the post-medieval period, and these may well have had earlier precursors, as early estate records seem to indicate. An eighteenth-century building account at Gothelney, near Bridgwater in Somerset, indicates that an early barn must have existed, possibly of the same date as the rest of the house, which has its origins in the late fourteenth and late fifteenth centuries. Gothelney was commissioned by a wealthy lawyer, possibly indicating that only the elite – including Norman and later lords of the manor or abbots/priors of abbeys – actually threshed corn (wheat, barley, oats or rye) on a large scale and only they had large barns. As for the houses of early yeoman farmers in the immediate post-Black Death period, little evidence survives before the fourteenth century.

Yeoman farmhouse still located within a moated site, photographed in the 1980s. Such a survival is very rare.

On large estates and certainly on those associated with monastic houses, the barns were typically very large, and often referred to as tithe barns, the local inhabitants having to give one tenth of their produce to their lords and masters. (It should be noted, however, that such buildings may not always have had this function, being merely large, economical repositories for scattered farmsteads.) In the same way, villagers had to take whatever corn they were allocated to the lord’s mill to be ground. Many had home-made quern stones to avoid this onerous requirement, which could result in short measure upon return of the finished product. Mill sites have their origin in the pre-Domesday period, though surviving buildings reflect many rebuilds.

An aisled tithe barn.

Aisled construction gives a central nave and side-aisled format to buildings. In such barns the side aisles could be cordoned off with hurdles for stock.

Many barns would have had multiple uses, housing cattle and sheep in extreme winter conditions. Sheep were kept for their milk, the milk from cattle being sufficient only for their calves.

Drying corn sufficiently for it to be ground was a problem in damp areas of the country, and there is archaeological evidence for corn-drying kilns. In some areas corn may even have had to be dried twice, before (as a sheaf) and after threshing (Brunskill, 1982, 1987: p.94–6). The same treatment would have applied to peas and beans, a staple of diet in the Middle Ages, as well as hay, and flax which was used to make linen.

It must not be overlooked that some of the ecclesiastical magnates and Oxford colleges owned vast tracts of land, which would have been the basis covered structure for calving or lambing. Again the so-called tithe barns still standing today possibly fulfilled this function.

Finally, this early period is characterized by a building type that is often still standing – the medieval dovecote. Not only did it provide meat and eggs to supplement a winter diet of salted beef or pig, but it also provided a means of free fodder. Birds could not be controlled in their roaming habits so a major landowner could allow his birds to feed on the crops of his poorer neighbours, demolishing serious tonnage, a somewhat cruel form of taxation. The survival of these structures is linked to their robust stone construction, thick-walled to accommodate the nesting boxes. No real evidence survives of how the medieval peasant combated this menace but it would be easy to envisage many small children pressed into scarecrow duties.

THE LATE MEDIEVAL PERIOD TO THE MID-18TH CENTURY

The period reflects an almost doubling of what we would now consider to be a modest population, three million in 1500 to almost twice this in 1700, as indicated by national census returns. More mouths to feed, many of them in towns founded in the thirteenth century and well established by circa 1500, meant more effort required to produce food; by the same token, the increase in population was due in no small part to increased yields, a somewhat chicken and egg situation. More buildings survive from this period, in particular threshing barns of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, where they have escaped the wholesale destruction that commenced in later periods, gathering momentum in the twentieth century.

Group of seventeenth-century threshing barns in a courtyard format, in the 1980s (now converted) indicative of very high crop yields. The format may have inspired the later courtyard groupings. The understanding of the meaning of groups is crucial to farming history.

Courtyards, known from archaeological evidence or sometimes in surviving buildings, indicating multiple threshing barns, testify to an abundance of wheat crops in the lowland zone. Areas of upland or downland, previously given over to cattle or sheep immediately after the Black Death, were enclosed into arable fields (Dorset being a prime example), while the dissolution of the monasteries in the early sixteenth century flooded the market with new country estates, giving impetus to different farming practices. In the aftermath of the fourteenth-century Black Death, the lord of the manor often leased unwanted demesne land (previously divided into strips) to the scattering of tenants who survived, which eventually led to ‘enclosure by agreement’ into fields and the breakdown of the whole feudal system. Enclosure of common fields in areas of Dorset is recorded as having taken place as early as 1361–1410 at Marnhull and 1434 at Hazelebury Bryan (Taylor, 1970: p.120). Some enclosure took place following the desertion of villages due to the Black Death. This release of land to potential farming entrepreneurs led to a surplus that could be fed back into both stock and farm buildings, so that the newly emerging yeoman class of farmer went from strength to strength, alternately rebuilding the house and the farm buildings. The farm buildings were rebuilt to cater for increased yields both in crops and stock. Stock was fed not just on hay but on other forage crops that had come to the fore, and arable land in turn benefited from the increase in manure.

Yeoman farmers continued to strive to better themselves by reclaiming land from the waste, or common land previously used as common grazing by their villein ancestors and upon which less fortunate souls had made their home. This sometimes led to the relocation of the more fortunate to the squatter cottages found on verges or narrow strips of land allocated down the side of newly formed lanes as late as the 1860s (see the squatter cottage pictures). The demise of the big monastic estates in the aftermath of the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539 meant that even more land became available to those aspiring yeoman farmers who had made good in the period 1350–1500, and many of these monastic sites became the basis for a new country house (Taylor, 1970: p.126). Wealthy merchants in towns provided a ready market for yeoman farmer endeavours.

Deforestation, in order to reclaim land for agriculture, yielded not only new outlets for crops but materials for building more substantial farmhouses and farm buildings, leading to the Great Rebuilding from approximately 1540 to 1670. As the seventeenth century progressed and timber became scarce, stone was used for barns in areas where timber frame had been the normal method of construction. Also in these areas timber-framed houses were converted to barns, their occupants building a new house in stone or brick. Jointed crucks took over the role of full crucks as timber became scarce.

SQUATTER’S COTTAGE. These photographs show a rare survival of a squatter’s cottage.

Former common land in Dorset enclosed in the mid-nineteenth century forms the backdrop to the cottage.

Looking down the long linear squatter plot, designed to be planted with vegetables and accommodate a cow and a pig, to enable those formerly illegally squatting on common land to survive the move.

End gable construction of the cottage.

The front elevation has one door and a single small window. Repair techniques need to be subtle.

The fireplace, which would have had a small iron range and adjacent food shelf. It would be essential to retain such features in a conversion to a modest holiday let.

Detail of the shelf and the beam ending. Retaining these features without disruption to their essential character needs to be carefully done.

Detail of ladder and sleeping platform. The platform could not be reused for sleeping as it would not be deemed strong enough under the building regulations. A separate but linked small, boarded extension could accommodate a small bedroom, kitchen and bathroom for conversion to holiday let.

The round chimney breast, which was typical in nineteenthcentury Dorset, is a major feature of the building.

A cruck barn that was previously an open medieval hall. Such magnificent buildings were sometimes relegated to farming use in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when they were deemed too old-fashioned or uncomfortable to live in.

Many medieval/post-medieval threshing barns bear signs of a number of life cycles. Timber would be reused to make a larger building capable of housing greater yields, plus an extra bay or so with a more up-to-date king post truss, still pegged by the mid-eighteenth century. Such was the demand that previously inhospitable upland farms (sheilings only used for summer pasture) were converted to permanent farmsteads, and in the lowlands long houses gave way to the soon to be almost ubiquitous courtyard format. Oxen started to be abandoned as a draught animal to be replaced by the horse, whose delicate constitution, should it sweat or grow lame, demanded a well-lit and well-ventilated stable.

Farm buildings remained characteristically regional, however. In Lancashire and Derbyshire, for example, the long house gave way to the laithe house. Here the barn was paradoxically attached to the house at its upper (parlour) end whereas the long house byre had always been at the lower end, and was still used for cattle, hay and threshing/corn storage, but now had its own independent external access. The communal cross passage was abandoned except in the southwest of England, and some long house variants survive on the Welsh border, with a shuttered window in the chamber over the house-place, through which the cattle could be monitored at night. These traditions continued the early format of the linear farm group. The Lake District is characterized by bank barns, cleverly built into a slope, so that the cattle were accessed from the lower level, and the corn storage/threshing was accessed from the upper level. The format is known to have strayed outside the area into the Welsh border and as far afield as Dorset, and even reappeared in model farms of the nineteenth century.

A purpose-built cruck barn. Such buildings are as rare as those in the previous picture (converted halls) and can date from the fifteenth century or earlier.

Bastle houses are found in northern England and Scotland; they have some affinity with the earlier Peel houses, serving much the same function. Here cattle were even more highly prized than elsewhere, demanding safe housing in an undercroft to a first-floor living room (hall), which had its own retractable or well-defended staircase.

The linhay, which comprised open-fronted or closed hay storage over the top of open-fronted or closed cattle sheds, made its appearance in the west of England and the Lake District, and was particularly used to shelter overwintering yards for cattle from prevailing winds, the traditional role of the threshing barn. Multiple yards demanded devices such as this.

Granaries continued to be part of the farmhouse in many areas up until the end of the period, and were prevalent in the seventeenth century. The granary was often on an upper floor with its own taking-in door. By the end of the period free-standing granaries were starting to appear, in timber-framed areas with a lightweight frame surmounted on staddle stones but of a linear form, and in particular in the West Country in square format, where there are numerous examples of square granaries on staddle stones. The style was eventually to lead to the doubling-up of functions characteristic of later periods, the granary over the cartshed or stable. Both developments are somewhat puzzling, as carts arrive wet from the fields and horse’s sweat. Excess moisture must have led to mouldforming in the grain. It must have been hoped that an open-fronted cartshed or well-ventilated stable would avoid this hazard. Farm buildings are, after all, about common sense and minimizing on labour and thus wages.

A seventeenth-century granary on staddles. The generous size indicates high yields, unusual for this early period. In this condition in the 1980s it is unlikely to have survived, such is the general loss of important buildings with much to tell about farming history.

By the end of the period most areas were beginning to adopt the courtyard basis, even if they had started life as linear or parallel in their building layout, and to consist of at least three main components – the threshing barn, the cowhouse and stable. Reference is made in documentary sources to various other building types, some reflecting the climatic conditions, such as corn chambers in Devon, and sheep-cotes and other buildings with mysterious names such as hovel (not as explanatory as beast house), swine house (reflecting the coming of pigs into the yard to be fed on milk whey), and pigeon house. Oasthouses for drying hops made their appearance in Kent and Herefordshire, and cider making became important in places like Herefordshire and Dorset, not least because many farm labourers were paid in cider. By the mid-seventeenth century horse-drawn mills for crushing the apples into a pulp or ‘cheese’ were freestanding or internal, with the apples stored above the undercroft where barrels of cider were housed (see the cider/brewhouse pictures). The seventeenth century also saw the innovation of cows kept in urban situations in order to ensure townsfolk had fresh milk, as transport along roads rutted in winter was nigh impossible.

The period generally was subject to price fluctuations, amply illustrated in the phrase ‘up horn, down corn’, and some barns and stables start to show a tendency, more prevalent in much later periods (like the late nineteenth century), of partial conversion to cowhouses. On the whole, however, the trend that had been set in the Middle Ages, particularly for the role of the threshing barn, was continued and was to remain largely unbroken until the agricultural slump of the 1880s. Buildings that had started life as a response to local conditions and materials continued very much in the same vein. The greatest change was to layout, with the linear, parallel, or L-shaped arrangements gradually moving over to the courtyard format. Gentry farmsteads started to emerge and the role of estates was strengthened.

ECONOMIC CHANGE IN RURAL AREAS 1755–1820

The so-called agrarian or agricultural revolution, which took place over this period, is something of a misnomer, as the demise of the feudal way of life had just a great an impact (as would other later phases of agricultural activity). What the two had in common was the impact upon field structure and with it the transformation of the landscape. This later phase was to see much more enclosure by agreement and culminate in the Parliamentary Enclosure Act, which mopped up all those areas of upland (thus abolishing the practice of transhumance – moving animals to summer pasture), marsh, forest, waste and common that had survived any earlier endeavours, which in turn resulted in even greater wealth divisions in farming society. The poor who had virtually camped out on common land but survived well enough on their few grazing animals and limited corn growing, became even poorer and homeless, and considered themselves fortunate to be farm labourers.

Any semblance of the communal farming that had supported the very poor in earlier periods, with age-old agreements about who could graze their animals on the common, rapidly diminished (with the exception of the New Forest, where this practice still exists today). Instead a plutocratic ruling class of squires (the gentry) emerged, who, together with their aristocratic neighbours, started to pave the way for agricultural improvement as well as early industrial endeavour based on water power. They employed agricultural agents and architectural advisers to devise new types of farm building that were more profitable and ‘human energy’ efficient. This culminated in the setting up of a Board of Agriculture in 1793, which, until it was dissolved in 1822, was responsible for producing documentary evidence of the state of agriculture on a country-wide basis. The social divisions between landlord and tenant, first established by copyhold yeoman farmers and their landlords, grew wider. The landlord became responsible for the provision of land and farm buildings, the tenant for stock.

The period saw the advent of major agricultural innovators among the aristocrats such as the Duke of Bedford and Viscount Coke of Holkham (Earl of Leicester) in Norfolk. Still, one should not run away with the idea that everywhere was gripped with the same fever of farming endeavour. Many backward rural areas still existed, where seventeenth-century buildings were still in use and landlords cared little for improvement as long as everything was ticking along and producing at least some rental income. It is these very areas that produce buildings considered to be nuggets of ‘building archaeology’ richness today, though at the time they would have been despised by more progressive landlords. It means that any surviving seventeenth-century building needs special care, while anything earlier is in need of even more care and attention when decisions are being made about its future. One such backward area was Dorset, but even here the Napoleonic wars of 1793–1815 gave incentives for agricultural improvement, with enclosure of common meadows near streams because of the need for spring pasture for sheep grazing, and the construction of water meadows for early grazing (Taylor, 1970: p.129)

In the Celtic fringe of Wales the hafods were deserted as cattle gave way to sheep, whose wool was required for industrial woollen mills, whilst in the lowlands substantial yeoman farmers amassed even more wealth, enabling many to move out of the confines of the village and build grand farmsteads in the fields. These were reached by tracks from the new, straight roads circumventing the new, square enclosed fields. Once again the population doubled, from 6 million to 12 million (national census return information), further enhancing the demand for food, and with little virgin land available for reclamation the only way forward was the improvement in farming techniques.

This is the era of agricultural improvement and endeavour that saw innovation in the production of machinery echoing the advances of the Industrial Revolution. The new seed drills enabled sowing in rows to facilitate hoeing and the production of different varieties of grass, clover and root crops upon which greater number of livestock could be sustained, which in turn led to more selective breeding of cattle as well as larger herds – all a far cry from the long-horned medieval cattle and communal grazing. New crop rotations meant the very end of open field strip agriculture, although it is surprising how frequently one finds isolated examples that must have continued to fly in the face of this development. Generally speaking, there were considerable improvements in arable farming. Most importantly, new farms required new building regimes and established farms required considerable improvement.

One of the by-products of increased landlord interest was the home farm, through which an avid improving landlord could put into personal practice his building ideas before trying them out on his tenants, at the same time generating extra income and supplying his own household. Described as being ‘in hand’, they were often also seen as model farms because they were the ‘shop-window’ of pioneering techniques, such as completely covered yards to conserve manure rather than it being diluted by rainfall, and easily accessible cattle stalls adjacent to feed passages equipped with rails to enable feed to be delivered by bogies/trucks. Home farms were sometimes designed by architects more used to designing fashionable Georgian houses, so were frequently embellished with sash windows or decorative roundels.

A Palladian classical window in a roadside elevation of an otherwise timber threshing barn of modest status. It was designed to make an important statement for the landowner in the eighteenth century.

The Duke of Holkham had a whole farm complex designed in the classical idiom. Such pretensions served no useful agricultural purpose.

A range of cowhouses, an even more humble class of building, given classical definition on a country estate home farm.

The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were also remarkable for the enclosure, first by agreement, and later by parliamentary act, of any former open fields that had survived, although many had been done by agreement in the seventeenth century, but more pertinently of the commons and wastes over which villagers had enjoyed customary rights of access for grazing and collection of firewood. The taking of these areas into private ownership resulted in the abolition of commoner’s rights and in many cases extreme hardship. Enclosures by private act of parliament were concentrated in the periods of the 1760s and 1770s, and from 1790 to 1810, when the price of grain rose due to the war with the French. A series of general acts led to the setting up of permanent parliamentary commissioners who could make parliamentary awards. The General Act of 1845 is slightly later than the period but was particularly forceful. The effects of such sweeping changes in the landscape on ordinary folk cannot be overestimated. As George Bourne writes in Change in the Village (1912), regarding a particularly late enclosure of the common in 1861 in a Surrey village:

The impoverished labouring people I talked to (as an incomer) had been in many cases, born in the more prosperous conditions of a self-supporting peasantry. When I heard talk of the village cows which used to turned out to graze on the heaths, fir timber fit for cottage roof joists cut on the common, as well as heather good enough for thatching and turf excellent for firing, and little corn crops in gardens, I understood that my elderly neighbours had seen with their own eyes that which I would never see, namely the rustic economy of the English peasantry.

Some old woman, half starving on her parish pay, would indicate this or that little cottage and remark that her grandfather had built it for her mother to go into when she married and there on a warm slope a former villager used to grow enough wheat to keep him in flour half the winter, and his children are now in fear of going to the workhouse.

Compare and contrast the new harsh situations of the lowly classes to the new enclosure farmsteads situated in the fields, employing similar architectural and working principles to the home farms, and you can see how the world of the humble rural dweller must surely have turned upside down. These new ‘enclosure farmsteads’ enabled ready access to stock, compared with farms in the villages, which necessitated travelling out to stock. (It is interesting to note that this trend has been reversed in recent decades, most stockmen now living in the nearest town or village, a trend which started with the provision of rural council houses on the outskirts from the 1920s.) Enclosure farmsteads tended to be very innovative and while not going as far as to be model farms, incorporated labour-saving devices such as the careful positioning of the threshing barn on the north side to protect the cattle overwintering in the yard and to get the late afternoon sun on the south side in winter to enable threshing to continue as long as possible.

In addition, improvements such as the introduction of the winnowing machine more than halved the floor space required for threshing, making the barn with the single threshing floor a better proposition than the larger and more expensive barn with two threshing floors. The barn was flanked by the stable and cowhouses for easy access to straw for bedding, with stables facing east to catch the first of the morning sun to enable the draught horses to be saddled and made ready for ploughing. Pigs were kept in close relationship with the dairy and the brewhouse as they were fed on whey and malt grounds (wort), and on home farms a complete complex with pigsties and slaughterhouse back to back with the brewhouse can sometimes be found. Multiple overwintering yards were constructed to cater for increased stock numbers and examples exist of up to three or four, enclosed with open-fronted sheds facing south or southwest to encourage cattle to make use of late afternoon winter sun, and protect them from prevailing north winds. Covered yards became more prevalent in later periods, which must have considerably reduced solar gain, despite conserving manure.

Some farms lingered on in villages until as late at the 1970s/80s, having done so originally because in some cases it was easier to carry on an established tradition, and access to other services such as water already existed as they had from time immemorial. Where traces of such farms still exist it is very important to convert sensitively, as many of them will contain evidence of earlier periods of building. Sadly their importance has largely been realized too late and many of them have simply provided cleared sites for new housing estates with euphemistic names, such as Orchard Farm – all semblance or either orchard or farm completely removed. Sadly the practice still continues, with cob farm buildings in village locations in Dorset being particularly vulnerable to being completely erased.

Some small market towns and villages did not relinquish their working farmsteads until the 1980s. This converted range looks very new.

The unconverted remainder has sadly lost most of its ambience.

A cob and flint range of cowhouses fronting a village roadside in Dorset, about to be demolished because the developer concerned had no real interest in converting, only in obtaining a cleared site.

Road access to market must have been a problem for enclosure farmsteads, particularly in winter, because such farms invariably rely on a long track connecting them to the enclosure road, but ease of removing crops from the field to the yard, and manure from the yard to the fields, appears to have taken precedence. Some of the new enclosure farms had names that reflected the political scenarios of the period, such as Wellington, or their situation in the open fields, such as Townsend (the former fields of the township, the traditional name for village), or indeed their most commonly used material, for example Brick Farm.

Many former substantial yeoman houses were divided into cottages, their characteristic bay design readily lending themselves to this – for example, a three-bay yeoman house became three individual one-up, one-down cottages. Gaps in between in the village street were in-filled with new cottages, so that streets started to resemble terraces, rather than the free-standing houses of old. More pertinently, the early farm buildings in their rear yards would have rapidly fallen out of use, and not being maintained for anything other than storage (rather as happens today), they tumbled down. With them went the legacy of farm buildings from the medieval period to the 1700s and it is one of the prime reasons why our understanding of buildings from this period is so limited. Any building that does survive in such a location is thus of prime importance for retention.

Occasionally new enclosure farms were worked from the village by means of an outfarm, a hay-store and cowhouse combined that could shelter cows in extremes of winter, but more pertinently provide conveniently placed manure for the nearest fields and readily accessible corn for feed (Slocombe, 1989: p.25). Some upland areas of Derbyshire and the Yorkshire Dales are peppered with these and they are not unknown elsewhere. There must have been much cursing by farm labourers in periods of deep snow when it was still essential for them to fill up the hayracks and spread the turnips though just getting to the outfarm was impossible. The year 1799 saw just such a time, when the snow lay on the ground from November to April in perilously frozen temperatures, and the stock died from starvation as even their turnips were frozen: ‘the turnips being all froze it is very bad for stock, there having been such a severe winter with so much snow and of so long a continuance like the hard winter of 1740 when it held for 13 weeks’ (Beresford, 1935: p.576).

In fact this particular documentary source provides much elucidation on the farming practices of a country parson who was required to supplement his stipend with tithes and his own stock and crops farmed on glebe land supplied for the purpose. This was a type of home farm and country parsons were part-time farmers. Buying three pigs and two cows at a time, for example, employing men to bring in the barley harvest of 8 acres (ibid.: p.125), receiving huge sums of money from tithes from local farmers nearly twenty times his stipend yet still being concerned to note the calve produced by one of his cows, was the norm. Brewing (in a copper) strong beer or making cider was an important part of his farming life, as was feeding the pigs on the grounds (wort), or the apple ‘cheese’ (the pressed residue) whereupon they frequently became exceedingly drunk. Buying malt from a maltster and employing a cooper was part of this activity (ibid.: p.388). Such was the importance of home brewing that in exceptionally cold winters a charcoal fire was kept in the beer cellar to prevent frost damage to the brew. Making hay in June and early July, pleaching (nailing in a spreadlike form) fruit trees against a wall, making and selling butter, measured in pints, and growing a prodigious amount of turnips (such that in a less severe winter and if not eaten, by April they proved an encumbrance on the land and had to be thrown into the ditches; ibid.: p.398) accompanied the growing of wheat, oats and barley. Crops were harvested in July/August to be sold in late autumn (measured in coombs and bushels), after storage in the barn. November was a typical month for selling, while the fields were being ploughed for the next sowing. In the year of 1797 in Norfolk there was a glut of such grain. Milk was converted to butter and cheese in a purpose-built dairy (as there was no means of transport of liquid milk), which, although not described, may well have had a stone flag floor and tiled walls, the parson recording the milk freezing solid in the milk-pans in 1792. Normally the making of butter and cheese was the province of the lady of the house and her daughters together with house servants but in the unmarried parson’s case it was done by servants alone. There is no mention of a cheese loft to enable cheeses to ripen but it must have existed. Intense cold in bad winters necessitated the keeping of poultry in the cartshed and the breaking of ice on the pond to allow the horses to drink. The cold killed the peas and beans, grown in village gardens, which formed the staple diet of the poor.

Activities such as the painting of pales (fences) and cutting clover in June, plus the keeping of bees in straw skeps (ibid.: p.558) show the importance of good husbandry as well as indicating the new crops such as clover of the period.

The consumption of meat protein by wealthy parsons and farmers was prodigious, much of it butchered off-site, but locally. It was not unusual for a single meal to encompass beef and poultry as well as fish. Mention is made of ploughing up orchards to sow potatoes, which caused considerable consternation as apples for cider were very important (ibid.: p.498). Mead was also made by the parson himself. Farm servants for even a modest glebe farm included a ‘farming man’, ‘dairy maid’, ‘yard boy’, and possibly others that are not mentioned. A steady stream of female farm servants came and went, many of them to bear illegitimate children immediately after their departure.

The period is marked by the publication of important treatises on the design of farmsteads around a courtyard, many of them by the prolific Authur Young, so that many farmers became familiar with the accepted permutation of threshing barns, beast houses (ox and cattle), stables, granary, shelter sheds, hen houses and pigsties. The symbiotic relationship between these became fully exploited so that, for example, henhouses were sited over pigsties so that foxes would be wary of entering and the minimal amount of labour was needed to convey straw and feed from barn to animals and remove manure from buildings. Cartsheds and turnip houses were sited on access roads on the farm periphery, the former because carts needed to be unloaded quickly when they were wet and the horses exhausted, and the latter because turnips were heavy and needed to be near the fields in any case.

The origin of the courtyard, like the origin of cross passages in houses, remains something of a mystery, but the production of a microclimate by means of ‘courtyard houses’ had been known for some centuries and were at the centre of some of the earliest estates. The control of manure must have been a driving factor, and the installation of gutters and down-pipes in cast iron (although earlier examples may have been in lead), a direct product of the advances in iron technology of the period, did much to prevent manure from being washed away and thus increased fertility. The development of the enclosed yard, where increased cattle numbers trod straw into their waste, and the formation of the midden, where manure-soaked straw litter from the beast houses was deposited illustrate that the collection of manure became central to the whole farming pattern. Straw became so valuable for its use in making more solid manure that in areas where thatch had predominated it became the practice instead to clad the roofs with tile or raise the eaves slightly to take slate.

A midden, the accumulation of manure from cleaning out cowhouses, still in operation in the 1980s. A later photograph of the same yard in the context of ‘country house home farm’ will show the yard now clear.

Midden in a working farm museum context (Acton Scott, Shropshire).

A midden possibly still in operation in a ruinous Somerset farmstead. The tenor of the yard suggests an elderly farmer still in occupation. Such is the fate of many working farms, still operating in a time-honoured way.

The role of the farmhouse should not be ignored in this master plan. It was sited to allow a good view of men at work, and constant monitoring of goods that could be easily stolen by hungry labourers, notably from the granary, which was itself sited so that it could be monitored from the most often used farmhouse door. If an earlier farmhouse was being reused – and in areas of dispersed settlement this was often the case – the yard continued to be monitored from the major entrance, but when eighteenth-century improvements necessitated the building of a grand frontage wing to the house, parallel or at right angles, this faced away from the farmyard, leaving the yard to be monitored from a back door, often the original farmhouse entrance.

New purpose-built brick farmhouses might include a farm office (with an external door for monitoring purposes) for keeping stock records and the payment of wages. This implies a high degree of literacy and social standing.

Numerous minor buildings proliferate in farmyards, besides the henhouses and pigsties. Sheep were rarely catered for, though they were possibly brought into the threshing barn in extreme weather or given temporary shelter with wattles and straw bales. All major farmers had a farm cart and nag for taking small quantities to market, and farmer’s wives had a gig to take them to church or visit neighbours, necessitating a gig house near or abutting the main dwelling. Some farms had a smithy for visiting smiths, others incorporated watermills for the processing of corn. Some areas have speciality buildings such as game houses – more usual on a home farm – and ash houses for wood ash from the house fire, a valuable source of potash for the fields that was sometimes enriched with bird droppings. Both building types tend to be round with conical roofs, perhaps echoing the earlier dovecotes.

An innovation in the barn was the development of the corn-hole, literally a brick box situated near the threshing floor to house threshing grain prior to winnowing. It was possibly indicative of the greater yields that required the whole business of processing to be divided up into stages. It was rapidly superseded by the threshing machine, so any survivals merit careful conservation. The first Dutch barns made their appearance, their thatched or tiled/slated roofs supported on timber pillars, or slate (as in North Wales); they removed the necessity for the yearly thatching of ricks, spelling the end of the era when every labourer learned to thatch.

The provision of yet another type of fodder, oilcake, in the later years of this period necessitated more extensive cattle-fattening sheds and rooms in which to store the oilcake, which arrived in large, oblong slabs. It was a by-product of the linseed oil-crushing enterprise, which was growing in importance in Britain but again came to be dominated by foreign suppliers, a portent of things to come. This incidental use as cattle feed resulted in cattle that fattened more easily and produced more manure. Soilage, the practice of storing grass in its green state and feeding it to cows largely housed for most of the year, started in town dairies and spread to the countryside.

Perhaps the most important innovations were the first tentative introductions of machinery. These mostly encompassed cutting and grinding machines powered by hand for cutting hay and straw into smaller components (chaff) for feed, or the winnowing machine, a series of sails which could be turned, reducing the reliance on wind.

By far the most innovative and far reaching invention was the threshing machine, a drum fitted with pegs that rubbed the grain out of the husk to drop into a container, the waste straw being ejected. The power was provided by belts, turned by horses walking round and round a horizontal wheel, which then converted the power into a shaft by virtue of a cog mechanism. Termed the gin wheel, it eventually warranted an open-sided, roofed building to shelter it and the horses, as many as four at a time. Such buildings, dating roughly between 1780 and 1800, were not universal, and with the introduction of steam power in the early to mid-1800s, fell rapidly out of use. Where they survive they again represent a rarity that warrant special care and attention, despite the fact that many had the open sides filled in and became cattle housing. Even rarer was the use of water power to drive threshing machines, which makes any survivor worthy of note and conservation. Threshing barns consequently changed their format, with the double threshing floor falling out of favour. Previously there had been dwarf walls with long raking struts and a tall stanchion extending from the sill beam atop of this wall up to the tie-beam, dividing the threshing floor from the storage bays. In new barns built for the purpose, high brick walls, level with the top of the threshing machine, were built do the same job of holding in the mow. The belts of the threshing machines also started to drive chaff-cutting machines and turnip slicers.

An open ginny ring in operation at Acton Scott, Shropshire in the 1980s. Health and safety regulations have affected demonstrations like this.

A horse engine house still surviving in the 1980s, having been converted to cowhousing, following a short operational life of about forty years.

A horse engine house and purpose-built threshing yard with a curved end wall (later roofed over), an apparent one-off, in danger of demolition.

Interior of a horse engine house in the 1980s with its central shaft, a rare survival.

These changes were not universal and in many parts of the country life went on as it had always done, with hand-flailing in the old barn, some new barns even being built for hand-flailing in remote rural areas where agricultural workers had little influence on estate owners. Here innovations were confined to threshing on oak boards rather than clay floors (a better bounce of the flail, and cleaner grain), larger granaries to house two harvests to enable grain to be sold at the best seasonal market, and the paving over of yards with cobbles or stones. The provision of cobbled walkways in front of the courtyard buildings enabled female farm servants to service the cowsheds without gathering mud on their skirts. These were modest improvements but probably made life easier for many farm servants and led to more efficient farms.

Materials for buildings were still tied to location and often in the vernacular tradition: for instance, in Wiltshire, Davies in 1811 records walls and stables being built of mud and chalky loam mixed with short straw – that is, cob. Where stone proliferated and could be afforded it was used, also for stone tiles, likewise brick in those areas where there was an abundance of clay and local brickworks. Roofs were often thatched in the ancient tradition. In Wiltshire, Davies, in 1794 and 1811, records that brick and stone were avoided and timber and weatherboarding with thatch roofs utilized. Stone pillars were, however, used for staddle (stavel) barns, in reality raised and enclosed ricks to keep away rats and mice.

A Derbyshire implements shed in stone, possibly designed to hold a threshing box or portable steam engine, adjoining a rather more prosaic range of implement sheds.

A possible haybarn over a shelter shed in Herefordshire but unusually soundly constructed.

A three-door cowhouse and shelter shed in Lancashire.

Stables with hayloft over on the Welsh border responding in their format to the upland topography.

A Welsh border granary over a cartshed, and a stable with a hayloft over, all in their original format and contrasting sharply with the unfortunate garage conversion.

A simple Suffolk threshing barn with a cart lodge, which would certainly lose much of its attraction if converted.

In contrast, this much more robust Suffolk double threshing barn with boarded framing above a substantial flint base wall might well retain its intrinsic features if converted.

A Wiltshire cob and chalk block boundary wall with a simple end building, possibly a stable facing inwards, forms the boundary to the farm and is so indicative of the local vernacular materials.

A late nineteenth-century stavel barn or granary adjoining a mill in Dorset. Contemporary writings hint at many such buildings but few survive. Its current use is as a playroom for the adjoining farmhouse and this is probably a good use for it.

THE INDUSTRIAL AGE 1820–80

This was the time of the big build-up to the zenith of revolutionary farming techniques incorporating important elements of the Industrial Revolution, but sadly culminating in a slump due to imported foodstuffs. It can best be described as the industrial phase of farming, when the engineer became the architect of farming enterprise, aided and abetted by an understanding of soil chemistry and the importance of fertilizer such as bird guano. Not every farmer had a desire to engage in new mechanical methods, even though there had already been some glimmerings of what was to come (as discussed above), but with a population that had again more than doubled by the end of the period, there was little choice. As it was, the developments could scarcely keep up with the demand for food. There was little chance of extra land, most of the enclosures having already taken place, and thus little opportunity for entirely new farmsteads, although some did take advantage of earlier enclosure or continued exodus from the village farms. These, if of an early date such as the seventeenth century, would by now be in a parlous condition, thus stimulating new build in the fields belonging to the ancient steading.

Realistically the only way forward was to make existing land and buildings more productive, in particular providing better housing for cattle, paying more attention to conserving their manure and making more use of imported fertilizer. Farmsteads began to be regarded in the same light as the many factories that were starting to dominate the towns. Some late enclosure was clearly taking place in counties like Dorset. Ruegg in 1854 (p.437) comments that former furze brakes and heaths were now enclosed, and Taylor (1970: p.155) comments that between 1820 and 1880 the claylands were cleared of forest and wastes for the creation of enclosure farmsteads accompanied by the movement of squatters onto wide roadside verges, with twenty acts to enclose in Blackmore Vale alone. Even so, with so much enclosure having already taken place by private agreement, these late enclosures were a minor feature. Dorset, of course, was famous for its water meadows, which were part of the overall improvement.

The Corn Laws were import tariffs designed to protect corn prices in the United Kingdom and Ireland against competition from less expensive foreign imports; they were in place between 1815 and 1846, when they were repealed. This was seen as a triumph for the ordinary working man, giving him a cheaper loaf, but in reality the repeal was to mark the beginning of decline for the growing of grain crops. Loans were made available at the time to landowners and farmers for capital investment in farm buildings as a form of compensation, enabling more rebuilding of existing buildings of the farm group, but essentially their layout and function stayed the same as it had been in the 18th century.

Large landowners were the exception, building monumental model farms with chimneys for the steam engine that became the heart of the enterprise. It enabled almost every manual task of cutting and mixing to done by machines, driven by belts powered by the steam engine, although one cannot help wondering if manipulating the complicated belt mechanism did not take just as much time as doing the task by hand. Large-scale steam operations requiring a chimney were actually relatively rare in the country as a whole, as the cost of the chimney must have been significant, not to mention the cost of the engine itself. Thus where such a chimney survives it is a prime candidate for retention. In some counties, like Dorset, where farming practices continued much as they had done in earlier periods, the advent of steam power was worthy of note by Ruegg (1854: p.410). The steam-powered farmstead illustrated, now by a stub chimney, was rated as the most efficient in the country – working the saw mill, bone mill, chaff cutters, corn and cake crushers, malt mill, food steamer and threshing machine (ibid.: p.401). In Dorset, where low rents and the cost of implements and seeds generally acted as a disincentive to invest or repair by landlords (Buckle, 1908), such major improvements must indeed have appeared staggering. Darby (1872: p.38) refers to the use of steam ploughs and cultivators, as well as reaping machines, mowers, elevators and turnip machine drills as being signs of improvement in the period 1854–72:

The use of steam power with the tall chimney and extensive range of buildings stood in strong contrast with the surrounding downs, with a six horse power engine driving a threshing, straw-shaking, winnowing and sacking machine, with most of the straw converted to chaff and the rest propelled to a large shed near the cattle housing.

Reconstructed sawmill at Blists Hill Museum, Ironbridge.

Many landowners, not themselves particularly skilled in mechanical developments, operated through agents, who took pride in adopting innovations in construction, using not only the traditional timber products of the estate sawyard, itself often using a steam engine to take over this laborious work, but also the new materials of the age. Brick (sometimes made locally or else imported from a nearby area), slate and Bridgwater tiles were initially brought to the farmstead by canals and then even more rapidly by the developments in the railway network, bringing both canal and railway buildings into the rural spectrum. Imported timber, a highly resinous, slow-grown softwood from the Baltic region, and moved into rural areas via these same canals and railways, replaced traditonal British timber.

Demand for timber was stimulated by the fact that using slate demanded a shallow pitch and evenly spaced rafters and battens, disposing of the pole rafters upon which thatch relied. It is therefore rare to find an earlier roof structure other than the main trusses. Those pole rafters that did survive were later removed for use with sheeting materials such as the new galvanized corrugated iron, which was destined to take over the role of all cladding materials, especially weatherboard on walls, even in remote upland areas. Solid buildings of mass walling construction meant much less yearly maintenance, and in fact many survived well into the twentieth century with scarcely a re-roofing. An unusual reference exists for the use of much less substantial materials for a new barn at Sutton Waldron in Dorset, constructed of a larch frame with furze wattle infill, and a roof of four layers of brown paper tarred over a boarded support – a sharp contrast to the much more robust materials being used in the period (Ruegg, 1854: p.412).

Granary at Home Farm, Stourhead, Wiltshire.